The descent of souls (1)

Text
Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.10-12:
The third group of platonists (= the neoplatonists) … divide the universe into two parts, but not in the same way. These would have the sky, which is called the fixed sphere, as one part, and the seven so-called errant spheres and what is between them and the earth, and the earth itself, as the second part. According to this sect, which is more devoted to reason, the blessed souls, free from all bodily contamination, possess the sky; but the soul that from its lofty pinnacle of perpetual radiance disdains to grasp after a body and this thing that we on earth call life, but yet allows a secret yearning for it to creep into its thoughts, gradually slips down to the lower realms because of the very weight of its earthly thoughts. It does not suddenly assume a defiled body out of a state of complete incorporeality, but, gradually sustaining imperceptible losses and departing farther from its simple and absolutely pure state, it swells out with certain increases of a planetary body: in each of the spheres that lie below the sky it puts on another ethereal envelopment (aetheria obvolutione vestitur), so that by these steps it is gradually prepared for assuming this earthly dress. Thus by as many deaths as it passes through spheres, it reaches the stage which on earth is called life.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.10-12

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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